'The EPS camp feels assertiveness will help the AIADMK keep the BJP's seat-share ambitions to the minimum,' observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
By sacking one-time political mentor and MGR era veteran K A Sengottaiyan who used to be a close aide of Jayalalithaa too, AIADMK General Secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami has signalled to the Bharatiya Janata Party as to who the real boss of the National Democratic Alliance is in poll-bound Tamil Nadu.
It is the kind of insult that the BJP's chief strategist and Union Home Minister Amit Shah has got used to since forcing EPS to revive the alliance that the latter had unilaterally snapped ahead of the Lok Sabha elections last year.
Sengottaiyan was present when MGR hoisted the AIADMK flag for the first time at the first property that he had purchased after becoming a film actor, and which has served as the party headquarters since 1972.
He was also among the first batch of MLAs elected under the AIADMK seal and symbol when MGR captured power in the post-Emergency assembly polls of 1977, months after the historic Lok Sabha elections.
Sengottaiyan had also won the most assembly polls that he had contested since, including the 2021 polls, when the AIADMK lost power with EPS as chief minister.
A known loyalist to the leadership even when Jayalalithaa had lost power and her own assembly seat in 1996, and later sidelined him, reportedly under pressure from confidante Sasikala Natarajan, Sengottaiyan had reportedly declined the chief minister's position that the lady had offered him when acting governor C Vidyasagar Rao refused to swear her in.
EPS then became CM, and Sengottaiyan, a fellow-Kongu Vellalar Gounder from the western region, remained loyal to the leadership -- until now.
To some in the party, EPS thus owed the chief minister's job to both Sasikala and Sengottaiyan, in that order.
Trouble started for Sengottaiyan when he addressed a news conference to urge EPS to re-unite the party by admitting the three breakaway factions, led respectively by Sasikala, three-time chief minister O Pannerselvam and one-time parliamentary group leader T T V Dhinakaran, an estranged nephew of the lady.
EPS did not wait for the 10-day deadline that Sengottaiyan had given him for initiating the unity move, failing which he would lend leadership to the effort.
The very next day he simply sacked Sengottaiyan from all party posts, leaving him only with his primary membership and membership of the state assembly. The question is not if he would take away Sengottaiyan's primary membership -- but when.
For EPS, it is a self-preservation strategy. It is the same as his unspoken reasoning for not re-admitting the other three, despite OPS and TTV declaring their decision not to seek party posts.
He is afraid of them, and Sasikala, too, especially over the possibility of the three ganging up against him, on the strength of the combined Mukkulathore community strength in the southern districts.
Sengottaiyan is well-respected in party circles, and used to be considered as a very good field worker and poll manager -- but does not count for votes any more.
He was Jayalalithaa's poll-tour organiser, so much so that once when she sidelined him, she had to hurriedly call him in on the second day of her poll campaign.
The other three have still not regained their 'respect' from party cadres, which they had lost independent of one another, through their own antics both during and after Jayalalithaa's time.
Against this, EPS is now the acknowledged face of the AIADMK and has come to believe that he is the party, as it used to be said during MGR-Jayalalithaa times.
Others beg to differ, and as Sengottaiyan has said in public this time, six of them met EPS months ago to press the case for 'reunification' on his terms.
EPS has denied any such meeting despite Sengottaiyan naming names. And the five of them are already back with EPS, as he alone is authorised under the law, pending some court cases, to allot the AIADMKs 'Two Leaves' symbol to individual electoral candidates.
Going by the crowds that have been gathering for his state-wide pre-poll campaign in recent months, EPS was said to be actively considering the idea of jettisoning the BJP and opening a line of communication with actor-politician Vijay's Tamizhaga Vettri Kazhagam.
It was known that the two sides were negotiating seat-sharing for the assembly polls, when Amit Shah intervened actively and forced the BJP tie-up down an unwilling EPS' throat.
Even now, many second-line AIADMK leaders feel that the party stood a better chance to return to power if it had the TVK and not the BJP as poll partner.
But having waited for positive signals from the AIADMK, the TVK reiterated Vijay as its chief minister candidate at the party's well-attended Madurai rally recently.
There is thus trust deficit in the TVK as far as the AIADMK is concerned. Of course, they will also demand the deputy chief minister's position for Vijay if seat-sharing talks were to be revived.
For now, the TVK is busy with Vijay's much-promised and equally delayed state-wide campaign-launch later this month.
There are those who believe that the BJP is behind Sengottaiyan, as it was said to be when he and the other five met EPS.
At the time, the latter was dragging his feet on reviving the BJP alliance that he had snapped ahead of last year's Lok Sabha polls.
There was even speculation that Sengottaiyan & Co would rebel against EPS, capture and re-unite the party and revive the BJP alliance, with Amit Shah's blessings.
There is thus consternation in the 'rebel camp' that Shah only used them to bring EPS around, and then dropped them like hot bricks.
Yet, when EPS shows assertiveness, as he has been once he was forced to revive the alliance in April, the message is not only for his party cadres but also for Tamil Nadu voters and the BJP national leadership alike.
Once they felt confident that the party is theirs, leaders like the DMK's Karunanidhi and also the AIADMK's MGR and Jayalalithaa had displayed certain assertiveness in their dealings with the national ally -- the Congress earlier and the BJP since.
The EPS camp feels that such assertiveness will help the party keep the BJP's seat-share ambitions to the minimum, despite all the tall talk of getting a fourth, if not a third of the total 234.
There is a greater message for Tamil Nadu voters. The AIADMK and the BJP had separately spread the narrative that DMK Chief Minister M K Stalin was unassertive, inefficient and hence ineffective. EPS' current effort is to try and capitalise on that 'public image' of Stalin.
But there is also a hidden message in it for EPS too. For Stalin, 72, and EPS, 71, this could be their last election as active leaders.
Against this, Vijay is 51, DMK Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin is 48 and the BJP's unabashedly ambitious former state unit chief, K Annamalai, is 41.
At least his followers in the BJP think that Annamalai's removal from the state party chief's position is only temporary -- and there may come a time, again, when the party may need him more than the other way round.
It will be their election or election of their generation next -- assembly polls in 2031, preceded by one for the Lok Sabha in 2029.
Common sense has it that Udhayanidhi would have to prove his mettle, whether as chief minister and party chief before 2031, or in the Opposition. Vijay, too, has to display his 'staying-power' and 'intent to stay'.
From within the larger BJP that is not going to go away any time soon, whether or not it wins the 2029 Lok Sabha polls, Annamalai may have a better narrative at the time, provided political Hindutva and perceptions of the BJP's anti-federal agenda are not in it.
In their midst, EPS and the AIADMK alone would have to win 2026, if they have to have a political future.
It is the fear of such possibilities that has motivated the likes of Sengottaiyan to speak out -- only to be snubbed with a sack order.
It's still all in the medium and long terms. In the interim, the outwardly sense of bickering in the mainstay AIADMK and the unsteady nature of the party-led BJP-NDA in the state may have given an edge to the DMK-led combine, where too ambitions over power-sharing used to be heard in the past, but not anymore.
Instead, the DMK can be expected to make 'political stability' a mainstay of its poll campaign, along with Stalin's personalised anti-Modi agenda, based more on federal issues and Tamil pride and less on political Hindutva.
The question at this stage is if Stalin's agenda and perception battle would win the day for the DMK, despite visible anti-incumbency against his leadership and government, which EPS has fairly succeeded in highlighting during his state-wide campaign.
N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and author, is a Chennai-based policy analyst and political commentator.
Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff